Interesting article listing the 5 types of thoughts - https://www.psychologytoday.com pristine-inner-experience thinking-without-words

1. ​​​​​​​ inner speech
2.  inner seeing
3. feelings
4. sensory awareness
5. unsymbolized thinking

I'm not sure I totally buy the whole thing but I did read a bit of the free preview of the dudes book.
If there have been enough quality research to validate these differences it would be a great way to drill down into meditative differences.
Reminds me of learning styles, auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc
Might be useful for the EPRC That is Daniel Ingram's current endeavor

Cool stuff anyway, things to think about thinking thoughts.
​​​​​​​~D

Defining feelings as thoughts seems ... uh ... kinda dubious. Like is the tightness in my chest indicating anxiety really a thought? Like really? 

it seems like what he is getting at with "unsymbolized thoughts" is mental states. Like the mental state of curiosity or wonder

Some thoughts on "unsymbolized thinking": it sounds like the mental tickle, nudge, process, whatever that one can note before it becomes a symbol (word or otherwise). But then that could include the rest of the categories. At worst "unsymbolized thinking" is a catch-all for the awareness of a thing just before it forms into a distinct mental experience. So I guess I am skeptical of that category being something onto itslef, as a type of thinking anyway. Maybe call it pre-thought? The other categories make perfect sense; in fact, I would include all senses as thoughts, since one can "think" in music, tastes, etc...

I tend to think of what the article characterizes as unsymbolic thinking as a frame of reference or meaning framework or a "view" for shorthand. It's the particular world of meaning the person is looking for/exploring while not thinking verbal thoughts. 



SPOILER ARTICLE : read the linked article before reading below....








Basically in reading the paragraph mentioning the ambigous term "Feature 5" people will move into some framework of meaning. There might not be any thought, but there will probably be a category of meaning that the reader is "looking for" as a result of hearing "Feature 5".

(For me, I thought feature 5 was going to refer to a feature on the buzzer the guy was talking about so I was looking to hear about what this feature on his buzzer/app was going to be. There wasn't any thought, but I associated Feature 5 with a particular category of objects/meanings and anticipated that I would be reading something to match that category/further describe that meaning.)

Incidently, this type of knowing, the knowing of view or meaning framework or worldview, is so central to really figuring out 3rd Path/4th Path. We identify with how we frame meaning (in a fraction of a second) and rarely question it as yet another not-controlled arising. We think that "I" have a view. 

In order to come to the conclusion - I have a tightness in my chest, I am anxious - it doesnt require words, or visual images.

It is thinking though.

I'll float a theory: anything that rises to the level of consciousness, anything that we are aware of, is thinking of one type or another.

EDIT: I'll also float a question - why does this matter?

I like the author's observation that the frequency of unsymbolized thinking is variable in the population. One of the fascinating bonuses of meditating, talking about it, and reading other people talking about it, is the realization that the internal experiences of different people differ, not only in content, but also in structure. 

I would consider, as an example of unsymbolized thinking, the situation in harder jhanas where verbal thought is not only absent, but impossible. I have repeatedly had the experience of being aware of the mind moving toward a verbalization and not succeeding. It's like a [linkage] is broken. My guess is that the language center is entirely off-line. This can, apparently, happen in strokes too. This is an extreme example because it can go on for a very long time, but I notice this class of thinking off the cushion as well. 

Uh, oh "inner" speech, "inner" seeing, "inner" vs "outer" is already gone into the ditch like a drunk man!  

Im looking these days at the "outer beings" vs the "inner beings" and how there could be more compassion towards the "outer beings" than the "inner beings" just because the "outer beings" are not I/Me and the "inner beings" are more like I/Me/mine, and YET all this shit culminates in the very same conscious "space" ... so ... this VIEW that the beings "outside" are "real" and the beings "inside (my mind)" are un-real ... and yet when I look (investigate) all this stuff happens in the very same "space". 

Let alone the possibility that what was there was maybe not there at all  

​​​​​​​Excuse me for bubbling too much over red wine! xxx

EDIT to add ; I did not read the link sorry ... will try ...

Well said! I think there is a tendency to place more emphasis on the difference between inner/outer beings than is justified. 

Well some of us still note things from time to time ;)

Is conceit just thinking then eh?

Im not saying there are no inner and outer beings ... ... its just .... ehm ... there is no way to verify any of these views/experiences as such! ops! So what now? Oh no! Panic! 


DON'T PANIC!!!

(Don't Panic is a phrase on the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The novel explains that this was partly because the device "looked insanely complicated" to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travelers from panicking.)

Papa, you are a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is!

Right on, right on! Know thy towel is the shit!  

'Mana' the fetter, sometimes translated as conceit and sometimes as comparison is a latent tendency, a conate of the mind.

Its expressed against a trigger / sense contact

Its expression is a whole lot of thinking. This thinking need not be verbal or visual.

A related paper Olivier posted awhile back. I find it quite interesting. 

https://brill.com/view/journals/jpp/52/1/article-p36_2.xml

-

I hope some enterprising person makes a go at standardizing the language we use to discuss these things. Not that anybody would follow it. 

“Did I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?”

I'm actually going to hold the line here and push back against Chris and Adi. Like sure, we could say everything is fabricated so it is in some ways a thought. Or we could say that "knowing" we are anxious is somehow a thought. But there is a lot of pragmatic value in keeping thoughts thoughts. Like verbal thoughts and visual thoughts do seem to construct a self in a way that is pretty orthogonal to say how a feeling of "me" that exists in a bodily sensation does. It's so different, that most beginning instructions for meditation carve out specific sets of instructions for dealing with this stuff in particular.

Plus like classical thoughts themselves are extremely rich and interesting in their own right, without being lumped into vague notions of "everything". Like take visual thoughts - you have 2d ones, 3d ones, ones that appear to be apart of the blobs behind your eyes, ones that appear to be in front, ones that emerge from blobs to come in front, ones that are 3d, full visual fields, and lucid enough to convince you you're somewhere else. 

like lumping it all together is watering it down

Interesting. I'm not sure I agree with this, but ultimately no big deal... I would say conceit is closer to a view/frame rather than a sensation, emotion, or thought ------ hmm, maybe that's the nuance: "thinking" to me is linear and narrative, "view" to me is a contextual framework that gets overlayed on sensations, emotions, and thoughts to give them a meaning. Hmm, interesting...

​​​​​​​Couldn't it be useful to think we have different kinds of thoughts to think about? I'm thinking that it's useful. Of course, it's not materially important in any way, shape, or form. But fun to talk about.

Hahah well I suppose it just depends on what you'd like to think a thought is. 

Like you could talk about a physical urge, and while some may consider that to be a thought, just by the name physical urge it's much more clear say where to look to for what. Or like this idea of proto-thought that's been floating around here, okay like this is like this mental state/intentionality soup that leads to thoughts. Compare that with the fact that I still don't really know what shargrol means when he says view, except for that it's not really explicit thoughts. Like I'm unsure exactly what I could point to in my current experience to call "a view". Which then makes it much trickier for meditation.

It can take a long time to observe the nuances that evade every day noticing of mental activity - dragging stuff up that affects our mental processing and our behavior. I know the ability to see the subtle nature of what's happening "in here" changes over time. So yes, it can be helpful to classify various kinds of mental activity in ways that help us observe more deeply.

"View" for me is a mental framework - a preconceived lens through which we observe. A view in this sense is seeing thoughts as linear progressions - as little stories - or - seeing thoughts as any mental activity we are aware of. A view is usually assumed, but a view can also be consciously adopted.

Maybe our view of what thoughts are evolves as we notice more subtle mental activity?

For what it's worth, I tend to use view to describe what KIND of story gets told, rather than the story itself. 

Just as a simple example, one person might feel bodily tension, shortness of breath, an adrenaline dump, etc. and they say "I am excited". Another person might feel the same thing, but say "I am afraid". Both might occur as they are getting on a roller coaster. What I've noticed is if you look at the "context" or "view" of the experience -- the first person ALREADY has a view of "roller coasters are exciting" and the second person has "roller coasters are terrifying" as a view.

So the tricky thing is a view is tautological -- we are excited because we feel excited because we view it as exciting because we are excited. 

This just a less jargon-y way to describe dependent origination. Because the view is there, the story is there, but without that view, there isn't that story. This actually goes very very deep, but first this "self-reinforcing" or "tautological" nature of view needs to be grokked/understood.

Well,
I do love to categorize 
Everything is everything!
but until then, perhaps it is useful to investigate what we are being aware of to be able to suss out what might be overlooked.

If all 5 types of thinking are true, we should be able to differentiate them and see if there is any usefulness in noting them.
People might get usefulness of different approaches depending on the predominate style they use...if there are different ways to the top of the mountain, could these 5 styles be the starting trails up?
Fun questions to work into practice...
~D

ugg, lost text.... (imagine it being really good and stuff)
blah blah locational atributtes of boundless stuff, explore note blah blah

Thinking type- Inword	Sensation - Outward	Practice
inner speech	auditory	location info derived from ears and compare to lack thereof of internal que
inner seeing	visual	play with peripheral differences of noticing in vs out
feelings	kinesthetic	Feeling tone crap here
sensory awareness	sensory awareness	https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/sensory-awareness-why-people-including-scientists-are-blind-it
unsymbolized thinking	unsymbolized thinking	https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201111/thinking-without-words

~D

I wish you didn't lose that text -- sounds interesting!

Nothing wrong with excitement! Let it rock and roll! Cut it some slack! Let it live a little!

Thats why I replied above so we don't lose too much txt!  

Okay here's a question for folks. You can mentally remember/hallucinate images, sounds, textures. Can people do that for smells or tastes at all? I don't think I can. 

Yes, sure. But mostly only for pleasant smells/flavors. It even gets a salivation response. 

Yes, I believe I do that. The intensity depends on how far back the experience was, and how much desire or aversion is attached.

I would guess that foodies can think experientially in tastes and smells, even do advanced mental operations to anticipate tastes (eg, a chef planning a meal, pairings, etc). Anyone want to confirm?

Huh I must have selective aphantasia I guess. Also explains why I'm not really a foodie. I always kinda wondered how everyone was so into food when it was so unbelievably transient 

FWIW, I am close to aphantasia for visual memory but for sound it's like playing back a tape recorder. 

We need a meditating sommelier to weigh in on this :-)